


The Youngest Grave Keeper

by starkraving



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Slavery, Battle Caduceus, Gen, Is what I'm saying, Shady Creek is full of assholes, Shady Creek is the worst, Slavery, Whump, grave robbing motherfuckers, nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 10:30:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16448207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkraving/pseuds/starkraving
Summary: Caduceus Clay has fought a few grave robbers in his time, but this is the first time he’s ever had to do it by himself. A quick backstory fic about the kind of trouble a hermit grave cleric might get up to





	The Youngest Grave Keeper

**Author's Note:**

> Note: this is mostly a fic about Caduceus fending off badguys but there are some risky moments. click to see notes at the bottom for content warnings.

It’s a little more work to tend the temple grounds by himself. Not necessarily more work than Caduceus can manage, but enough work that he can reasonably spend an entire day at a single part of the caretaking and still have more to be done the next day.

The point is, some days, he gets tired without his siblings to help.

Caduceus wakes drowsy, his face pillowed comfortably in the crook of his arm with the hum of cicada in the distance. It’s the heat of the summer and he’s comfortably, warmly, sore though his upper back and pectorals. His fingers ache a little with the repetitive work of replanting around the barrier fence and there is a vague but persistent—he must admit—hum of silence that’s started to be distracting. The Blooming Grove is loud with plant and wildlife. It’s just adjusting to that  _spot_  of silence. That quiet where his sister used to comment warmly on the progress of wisteria long the south wall.

He’s not sure what woke him.

For a moment he just blinks slowly, the warm yellow heat of sunshine laid in sections cross his shoulders and back. He did, actually, simply put his things aside and lay down in the grass near the temple, curling up there and dozing off to the sound of summer and the smell of green things. He yawns. Massive, lazy, tongue curling a little with the force of it. He quirks an ear toward a sound, a crunch leaves almost directly to his left across the grave plots near the barrier fence. He pushes himself up a little on one elbow, a thick section of pale pink hair sliding forward from behind his ear as he peers at the fence.

There’s movement there.

Someone is trying to get a look through the bramble. He can hear it more obviously now: boots on leaves as someone shoves at it. There’s a person-shaped shadow between the vines.

“Can I help you?” Caduceus calls out.

There’s a pause, then a low voice says through the briar, “I’m looking for the groundskeepers here.”

“You have one,” says Caduceus, sitting up. “Apologies, I was sleeping.”

“Where’s the rest of you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The others. The other groundskeepers.”

Caduceus blinks slowly, a niggling disquiet pawing at him. “They’re out collecting in the forest. How can I help you, friend?”

Silence. Then, “You’re the youngest of the groundskeepers here, aren’t you? The one that doesn’t come into town.”

“My name is Caduceus and, yes. My brother and sisters handle that mostly.”

“They haven’t come into town in a while.”

“It’s summer. We don’t need to come into town.”

“For five years, they haven’t been in town.”

“Oh.” A pause. “I’m sorry, is that a while?”

Another longer pause. “No. It’s no trouble. I’ve been sent to ask about requirements to inter the dead here.”

“Has someone died?”

“They’re near death. Can you come to the fence please?”

Caduceus rolls over, picks up his staff from the grass near his head and ambles toward the fence, peering with a little difficulty through the bramble and the iron bars and the creeping ivy. He can somewhat make out a tall, lightly armored individual. A half-orc maybe judging by the slight catch in their Common that suggests speaking past tusks. Clay can hear the slight clink of belting that suggests they’re weighted with weaponry. Completely normal given the incredible danger of the Savalierwood.

“Are you alone?” Caduceus asks, concerned. “You shouldn’t travel through the wood on your own.”

“I’m paid to move fast and by myself.” The half-orc is peering through a gap in the barrier wall’s plant life, just the size of a person’s palm. “Hello. I’m Merrin, by the way.”

Caduceus has to bend down a little to peer back, sees a pair of amber eyes blinking through the vines. “Hello. Nice to meet you.”

The gaze flickers up and down a little. “Hmm. You’re an interesting color, aren’t you?”

“I suppose,” Caduceus says mildly, leaning on his staff. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah. I’ve heard you only inter certain kinds of people here. Before we bring a party through the wood, they wanted me to come here and clarify to ensure we don’t unnecessarily endanger anyone only to be turned at the gate.”

“Well understood,” says Caduceus.

“Could I come in and have this conversation or…?”

“I’m afraid I don’t open the gate unless absolutely necessary. It breaks several of the warding lines here, but the conditions are fairly simple. We cannot inter any dead who lived a life undeserving. If their loved ones have any doubts, they should not bring their dead to us. If they do, we can of course provide burial services outside of the grove, full ceremony and blessing, but not within.”

“Okay. That’s all I needed. That and, well, confirmation someone was still out here to meet us.”

“Of course.” Caduceus flicks an ear idly toward the opposite side of the fence, listening for the sound of other unannounced visitors. “It’s a little odd to come this far for just that. The Mardoons have a few Savalier hawks trained to carry messages safety to and from our temple. Did they not volunteer their use?”

“My employers aren’t personal friends I assume.”

Caduceus tilts his head. “No?”

A pause.

“Definitely the pretty one in your family, aren’t you?”

Caduceus blinks. “Pardon?”

But Merrin already moving away. “Anyway, thank you for your help, Caduceus. I’ll see you again soon.”

And then Merrin is gone, fading into the Savalierwood and then it’s just the sound of the cicadas and the rustle of trees. There’s that silence again that Caduceus is getting used to, where he feels his big sister would have had additional commentary. He thinks she wouldn’t have liked all those questions and he follows that instinct over the next few days, murmuring to the briar and bramble to grow tight and wind high around the iron fencing, to choke out all the gaps that might allow outsiders a chance to stare through and make comments about resident groundskeepers.

He’s not sure how long it’s been since his parents left the grove or how long since his brother and second oldest sister followed. But he knows, now, it’s been five years since anyone saw a member of his family. He wonders, again, if that’s a long time. So many seasons alone since his sister left to find the rest of their family who have been gone much longer than that, but he can’t say exactly how long that is out there. Time swallowed by the trees and the tombs.

“They’ll be back,” he says to the morning glories near the temple door. “It’ll be fine.”

 

***

 

It’s less than a four days later that they come.

Clay is tending to the garden in the back of the temple grounds when he hears their approaching footfalls, four of them, the rattle of equipment heavy on their persons and in the time that he hears it, two sparrows land on the tomato trellis he’s working on and chirp furiously at him. Caduceus knows that urgent tonality and quickly grabs his staff from the tilled dirt, light rushing gently into the amethyst at the head of the gnarled branch. The canopy is getting noisy now, hundreds of crows and smaller birds kicking up a screaming cacophony. Caduceus darts from the garden into the temple, masking the sound of his moving.

“Hello?” says a voice from the front gate. The one long since barred shut by briar and twisting vines. “Anyone here?”

Caduceus kneels in the corner that makes up his sleeping quarters, stripping his thin gardening shirt and grabbing a thicker long tunic. He puts it on. He tugs the length of his hair out of the collar, pulling it back and deftly knotting it against the base of his skull then twisting it up securely against the back of his head. His sister’s voice in his ear says, ‘ _In battle, don’t give them anything to grab onto. You understand, Cad?_ ’ He can hear them trying the gate outside. He grabs his armor from by the door, pulling it on over his head and snapping the clasps up the flank. The overlapping chitin whispers as he bends at the waist to grab his staff.

“We’re looking for the groundskeepers here.”

Caduceus grabs the small plate that serves as a shield, sliding his arm into the straps before getting up and making his way outside toward the main gate. He stops a good ten feet from the fence and glances up. Crows have lit along the eastern barrier, are hopping north, indicating that someone is moving along that side of the hedge.

“I’m here,” says Caduceus. “How can I relieve your pain, friends?”

There’s a beat. Someone murmuring. Then, “We come to you with our dead, groundskeeper. Can you help us?”

“Who has passed?”

“Emory Oakfall. A healer from the southern towns to Shady Creek Run.”

“How do you know them?”

“I’m a friend. My name is Drek Von. Emory lived a good life and always wished to be interred here, in the grove of the Wildmother. Can you help us?”

Caduceus contemplates momentarily. Then, “How many are here with you?”

“Three.”

Caduceus glances to the crows along the south fence. “Aren’t you, in fact, at least four?”

Another quiet. Then a sigh, “Look, we don’t want to make this difficult. Your name is Caduceus, isn’t it?

“Yes.”

“We know you’re alone here, Caduceus. Merrin staked it out for us. The others have all left, haven’t they? Your family?”

Caduceus backs away from the gate a little. “I’m not alone here.”

“Open the gate, groundskeeper, or we’re going to come inside and if you make it difficult for us, we’re going to make things difficult for you. You don’t want that, do you?”

“I think,” says Caduceus, “that you want to make my life difficult either way, Drek. It’s in your voice.”

“Then believe me when I say this: We’re going to take what we want from this place. Whether or not we hurt you while doing it will largely do with how much you cooperate.”

Caduceus is already running to the other side of the fence.

Just in time as a figure dressed in light leather armor and padding (likely to circumvent the thorns) comes over the top of the fence with a short dagger between their teeth… and are immediately assailed by pecking crows. Caduceus throws out a hand and sound of deep bells sound, as if from deep in the forest, and the man on the wall screams as black veins spider dark across his face. He topples into the yard, body thumping unpleasantly from the fifteen-foot fall. They lay groaning and Caduceus smells smoke.

He pivots, sees flame from the vines at the gate, vicious and unnatural. Rapidly consuming the briar and greenery.

He turns and cracks the head of his staff across the first intruder’s skull, hard enough that they’re either going to be dead or very concussed, then runs back toward the front gate. The living green vines and briar aren’t catching as well as his assailants would like, but they appear to be using accelerant of some kind because the flames persist rather than smother. Caduceus feels a burn of low panic rising through him, the shivery buzz of adrenaline though his body sliding into an unstable compound of dread and indecision.

 _Calm down_ , says his sister’s voice.  _Don’t let them in. Force them to climb. Make them bottleneck._

He breathes, moves toward the gate, a glow spinning up around the crystal in his staff—

And there’s a hiss and something stings the muscle in his upper right thigh. He stops casting, looks down… sees a dart the size of his thumb lodged there and feels almost immediately a cold numb spreading from the point of injection. He yanks the needle out immediately and runs to take cover behind a large head stone, leaning his shoulder against it while the relentless crawl of paralyzing poison soaks through his thigh. He presses his palm to the wound and a surge of healing pulses through the sinew. The magic pushes the poison from the wound until the terrible numbness is gone…

He can hear the gate rattling behind him. He leans around the headstone – sees three armored figures now gripping the bare bars and working on the chains that wrap the front gate shut. Caduceus taps his staff and the familiar shiver of invisibility slides across his body. He darts from behind cover again, rushes toward the gate. There is the half-orc he knows (Merrin) and a  _massive_  half-Goliath, easily over seven feet tall, gripping the bars in a huge gloved hand. He’s watching the work of a smaller elven man who is trying with difficulty to pick a scorching hot lock.

Caduceus doesn’t wait.

He darts up to the gate, still invisible, shoves a hand through the bars and grabs the lock-pick’s wrist just long enough to cast a vicious infliction of wounds. The man  _screams_  as two dozen deep, bleeding wounds just burst open, leprous and rotting and in that instant Caduceus becomes visible again and lunges back from the gate as the other two swear and grab at him, fingers closing on a part of his sleeve and just barely tearing through the tie that holds his hair back. He gets free of them, hitting the ground and scraping his palms, twisting to look over his shoulder where the other two are shoving the wounded (dead?) man out of the way. The part-Goliath rears back. He brings a hammer up over his head and cleaves the lock from the gate with a single monstrous downswing.  

The gate flies open.

Caduceus scrambles back, trying to get his feet but in the time it takes him, Merrin is across the ground and immediately swings down on him with a stone-headed club that smashes into his unarmored thigh, sending a crippling crack of pain straight up his hip into his torso. He yells, twists up and kicks Merrin so hard the man flies like he got the worse end of a stallion’s hoof. But then Drek (this must be Drek) is on top of him. He doesn’t use his hammer, but he grabs and tears the staff out of Caduceus’ hand – so fast he doesn’t have time to fight for it.

Then the man is on top of him and it’s… it’s like wrestling with his older brother.

His older brother is twice as heavy and three times as fast as Caduceus.

He thrashes, shoving at the man’s face but he largely ignores it. He doesn’t get on top of Caduceus directly, but gets alongside him, behind him, hooking an arm up under his armpit and locking both hands together across the nape of the firbolg’s neck, shoving forward so the whole of his Goliath-dense weight is on top of him Caduceus thrashes, gets his knees under him, then one foot and before Drek can do anything about it, Caduceus is standing up with the massive Gollath hanging onto him… and then he just throws himself sideways and slams down directly on top of the Goliath.

The man roars, holds on tighter…

So Caduceus rolls hard, gets his leg under him and he does it  _again_.

There’s an audible crunch and a big ‘oof’ from the Goliath, but Drek keeps his full arm bar over the nape of Caduceus’ neck and this time he fights the firbolg’s efforts to get leverage again. Drek rolls, keeps Caduceus on the ground and pins him chest down in the grass. His breath against Caduceus’ neck is controlled, calculated, calm.

“Stop struggling,” he hisses. “Don’t wanna hurt you, groundskeeper.”

Drek torques his elbow and the angle threatens immediately to pop Caduceus’ shoulder out of socket. Caduceus yells because it  _really_  hurts, feels the Goliath shove him down even harder. His hair is loose now, tangled and in his eyes, leaves caught up in his mane and that’s when Merrin rejoins the fray. He slides on one knee right beside Drek, hooks an arm around Caduceus’ right thigh and starts looping rope around the limb, like you hobble an animal. Panic makes Caduceus thrash, but he can’t get them off. He can’t –

“I said stop fighting,” Drek snarls.

In Sylvan, Caduceus shouts, “ _Help! Please! They’ll destroy this place!”_

And the crows that know his temple  _swarm_  the intruders. They darken the yards, pecking and screaming. A cloud of ravens and crows descending and tearing at the two graverobbers. Merrin screams and swears, falling back.

“Godsammit,” hissed Drek and he seizes a fistful of Caduceus’ hair and slams his skull against a ground and everything goes immediately dark.

 

***

 

Caduceus comes around to someone carefully applying a damp rag to his aching skull. For a dull, vulnerable moment he can’t remember why his head hurts so much and when he moves, his right knee grinds and sends a bolt of bone-shattered pain through his entire body. He jerks reactively, a throttled moan catching in his throat and someone quickly touches his forehead. He feels fingers parse blood-sticky hair from the shaved part of his skull, pressing the compress there again. Caduceus lays still for a moment, vertigo sending him spinning along dizzy orbitals across the grass. Entirely by instinct he says his sister’s name.

“Afraid not, groundskeeper.”

Caduceus opens his eyes.

Merrin is kneeling over him. He’s big for a half-orc, his complexion a green-ish gray, tusks capped in silver. Scars across his forehead and into the short sections of his hair. He’s holding a linen rag against Caduceus’ head and the cleric doesn’t have to move to know his arms are bound at the middle of his back, knotted together in loops and loops of heavy rope. His armor lies in a pile by a headstone. The grass under his body is cool against his face and chest through his tunic. He doesn’t try to move, just lays still, staring uncertainly up at the graverobber while they wipe blood out of his fur.

“Your leg’s busted,” he says, calm as a summer day. “Right above the knee. So no trying to be clever.”

“What are you going to do?” Caduceus tracks Merrin with his eyes alone. “What do you want?”

“We’re digging up the Mardoons, first of all. So you need to tell us which graves are theirs.”

He shakes his head. “I won’t.”

“You will. Because you’re alone out here with us.” Merrin lays a bare hand against the top of Caduceus’ hair, fingers sliding into the long part so it’s almost comforting. “We have all the time in the world to make you tell us…”

“If I help you, are you going to let me go, Merrin?”

He sighs. “I think you know we aren’t.”

“You’re going to kill me?”

“No.”

Caduceus reads the way his eyes rove, then says, “You’re going to sell me.”

Merrin studies him before answering. “You know I’m a pretty good artist.” He digs around in his pocket, produces a small flip book and begins to leaf through it. “I showed a few traders a sketch. Here. Take a look.”

He shows Caduceus the notebook. Inside is a small drawing in charcoal and chalk, a very striking likeness of Caduceus – asleep, curled up in the grass in the graveyard. There’s a strange affection in the details, in the line of his jaw and the bramble shadowing in his brow, where his eyelashes lay against a gray cheekbone. His hair pools like water in the image. It’s a slightly exaggerated representation, the limbs more cat-like in line and curve, his clothes rucked up near the waist and shoulders, unflattering but in a way that makes it seem the viewer is getting a look at something they shouldn’t be.

Caduceus doesn’t need to see much more to understand what Merrin’s selling with this picture.

Merrin flips the notebook closed and pockets it again.

“You watched me that long?” Caduceus asks calmly.

“Yes. There’s quite a bidding war you know.”

“Seems like a waste of money, but okay.”

The half-orc peers at him for a moment, then he reaches down and takes a fistful of Caduceus’ hair and almost casually yanks his head back. “You don’t scare real easy do you? So… let me ask you this: You’ve never been into Shady Creek right? There would have been word if a weird fucking firbolg showed their face around the townships so I’ve gotta assume...” Merrin smiles a little. “You haven’t gotten around?”

“I can disguise myself you know. We all can.”

“You’d best answer me,” Merrin says easily. Their hand moves off Caduceus’ hair, slides down to his jaw, his thumb pressing gently then less gently against the soft part of Caduceus’ lower lip. Merrin smiles. “I could break you in a little, but you’d sell for more if we left you alone...”

“Knock it off, Merrin.”

Caduceus glances past the man kneeling over him. The half-Goliath, Drek, is seated on a rock, eating unwashed carrots from the garden. The sun’s setting. Dusk light still dapples the grounds around the giant grave robber. One of his compatriots lays in a cot with their head bandaged nearby. The one that came over the back of the fence. Caduceus can smell that he’s been dead for about half an hour. He can also smell fresh turned grave dirt, mud, and torn grass. There’s soil underneath Drek’s gnarled fingernails and a shovel laid in the lawn nearby.

“You killed Lee and Saundin,” the big man says to Caduceus. He tosses the rest of the carrot and stands up, dusting his hands off. “You’re tougher than you look, aren’t you, firbolg?”

“I wouldn’t know. Do I not look tough?”

“For your kind? Nah. Rest of your family—those were some big-ass scary giant-kin. What’s wrong with you?”

“Just the runt of the litter,” Caduceus says carefully.

Drek sighs and crosses the space between them, kneels across from Merrin, and with a brisk business-like grab, he pulls Caduceus over onto his back and vices thick, blunt fingers along his jaw. He yanks Caduceus up a little, forcing his head back and holding his gaze with a calm but clear impatience. This close, his breath is stinking and hot, enough to make a firbolg’s eyes sting.

“You ever been real hurt before, Caduceus?”

Caduceus gauges that question, keeps his chin raised, gaze direct while he answers, “A dire wolf mangled my leg when I was younger. I’d say that’s the worst.”

“Good. Good.” Drek takes two fistfuls of his collar, fingers curling so tightly it starts to make a noose out of the cloth. “Let us be clear: Tell us which grave is the Mardoons’ or it won’t be the worst you’ve been hurt.”

“I don’t—” Caduceus starts to say, but stops, one ear twitching up. He glances over his shoulder. “Did you hear that?”

Drek sounds annoyed. “What?”

Caduceus looks the other way. Waiting. Distantly, almost too far away to identify, he hears a low noise. Like a high rattling screech of a barn owl but far, far too strange to be an owl or any bird that he knows. He looks back at Drek.

“Did you close the front gate?”

Drek backhands him. He does it like you whack a stubborn door into its frame, very matter-of-factly, and exactly hard enough to snap Caduceus’ head to the left and put white starbursts in his vision, make the world ricochet around in his skull. The pain glows across his jaw and briefly dominates every sense. Drek readjusts his grip on Caduceus’ collar and Merrin just kind of watches, a bored neutral expression suggesting this is very routine.

“You’re not listening to me,” Drek says. “I won’t ask again. Where are the Mardoons buried?”

Caduceus tastes blood.

“Listen, friends, I know you have money you’re trying to make, I understand that. But if you don’t close the warding loop, there are things waiting to—”

Drek lets go of his collar with his left hand, he  _grabs_  Caduceus’ broken leg, directly above the knee where the fracture splits bone. The sudden 100-proof bolt of pain hits his brain and the world dims out on his instinctive scream. He thrashes once, before his vision goes and everything goes– He comes back around seconds later. He’s lying, gasping, curled up in the tangle of wildflowers and grass. His forehead is scraped where his head hit the ground. The dirt smells like slow decay, like torn greenery and sweet flora. He can’t think straight. It hurts so much he can’t –

“Stop damaging the merchandise,” says Merrin, moving to kneel beside Caduceus. “Hey. You with us?” When he gets a low, gritted moan in response he sighs. “Okay. C’mon.” He grabs his arm, pulls him off to the side and rolling him onto his back, hands bound behind him, ignoring the firbolg’s additional agonized noises. “You’re okay. Just relax. We’ll be done here in a bit.”

“Please listen to me,” Caduceus rasps. “These grounds have stood for centuries. I’m the last one holding back the woods. If I leave, nothing will hold back the forest. It  _wants_  to get inside this place.”

“Hey, stop talking.”  

“You don’t understand. The fact you even broke the gate is dangerous to—  _What are you doing_?”

Merrin is very calmly tugging at the cloth-knot belt at the waist of Caduceus’ clothes. He seems to be struggling a little with the loose pleats of fabric, idly feeling around as if for pockets but also definitely not patting him down for missed spell components or weaponry. Caduceus jerks back, yanking his good leg up and pushing away from the grinning graverobber. Merrin’s smile never cracks. Not once. Not even as he grabs a fistful of cloth at Caduceus’ hip and yanks him back across the ground, pulls him between the half-orc’s boots then kneels, straddling the bound firbolg and gathering his head into his hands.

Caduceus bucks his head back instinctively, but Merrin just digs his fingers in knotting a fistful of fur and the longer hair at the nape of his neck, yanking his head back so far, the arch of his throat is bared. Caduceus has to swallow a reactive, animal noise, his wrists twisting as he briefly strains to tear through the ropes, shoulders shaking with the effort until he has to fall back, breathing fast and shallow. He grits his teeth, turning his head aside as Merrin leans down and speaks directly into Caduceus’ flipped-back ear.

“Are you paying attention?”

Caduceus, given no choice, nods stiffly.

“Good.”

Caduceus feels fingers at the hollow of his throat, then sliding south, hooking into the over-lapping lapels of his robes, pulling and parting them over his chest.

“Where are the Mardoons?”

“Southwest end of the grounds. Under the red flowers.”

Drek hearing this, huffs and grabs a shovel, marching off towards the southwestern part of the graveyard. Merrin doesn’t move though, just continues to kneel there on top of Caduceus, studying his face. Caduceus holds his gaze, maintain the outward illusion of calm while his heart hammers frantically against his breastbone. Merrin’s gaze is flicking idly across his features, reading them like you read a book and Caduceus has to strangle the dread taking root in his lungs because he can read features too and what Merrin wants to do is written behind his eyes in cold grey.

“You know how rare it is to get hold of a firbolg?”

“We’re usually hard to find,” Caduceus agrees, discretely continuing to work his wrists in their bonds behind his back.

“The Shepards manage it sometimes, but they’re the only ones.” Merrin’s eyes trail downward, lazily, to Caduceus’ throat, across the slightly animalistic structures of his nose and mouth. “I think even they would pay something interesting for you. You’re like nothing I’ve seen.” He reaches up, idly brushing pink hair back from the bloody scrape on his forehead but Caduceus doesn’t flinch or react. “Why did your family leave here alone? They must have known someone would eventually try their luck.”

Caduceus glances across the yard toward the front gate. He can see where they left it wide, the scorched earth and iron hung open like a wound in the green. The sun setting, the twilight still bright enough that Caduceus can see the grounds clearly, but soon that won’t be true and he can hear now how silent the forest is all around the Blooming Grove. Like all the wildlife has fled and through the gates, the dark, twisted forms of the Savalier trees seem to shift in the lengthening shadows.

“They left because the forest is dangerous,” he murmurs, staring continuously at the darkness through the gate. “Because the curse in the Savalierwood is trying to kill our home.” The shadows beyond the gate shimmer, the longer grasses near the edge of the burn field flattening slightly and Caduceus swallows hard, his pulse accelerating. “Because there are things out there that want to swallow this pla—”

Merrin grabs his chin and yanks his face back up, forcing him to meet his assailant’s gaze.

“Not your problem anymore, priest.” The man keeps hold of Caduceus’ jaw, pulls the front of his tunic farther open. He smiles this time when Caduceus flinches instinctively. “See? You have different concerns now.”

He can hear, faintly, the whisper of something moving through the yard, something his hearing is appearing sensitive enough to perceive, but Merrin does not notice. But then again, Merrin is wholly focused now on the task of scaring his would-be victim. He uses both hands now to pull the hem of Caduceus’ robes off his shoulders, down his biceps, exposing the amulet around his neck and laid against his heart. Caduceus’ entire body goes rigid, fear and revulsion tensing every sinew in his long frame, but even as fear build in him like pressure, he’s still hearing that slow myriad whisper of strange footfalls. Too many footfalls. More than a biped. More than a quadruped. He can’t –

Merrin jams fist against Caduceus’ broken leg, twists a startled, agonized scream out of him before grabbing a fistful of his hair, wrenching his head around.

“Pay attention, you stupid animal!”

“If you are what I think you are,” Caduceus rasps, ignoring the man on top of him, “then you survive on what lives from this Grove.”

“What the fuck are you talking to?”

“Help me or this place dies.”

Pain again, fingers digging into the broken section of his legs and Caduceus’ spine arches up, a scream catching desperately in the back of his throat before he swallows that sound as useless and instead cries out, “Stop them! Please!”

“No one is gonna help you.” Merrin seizes him by the throat, throttling his windpipe shut. “Beg if you want, but I’m not gonna–”

And that’s when Merrin’s skull crunches in like an eggshell. His face implodes. Bursts blood, bone crunching as gore splatters hot across Caduceus’ face and throat. The cleric flinches, eyes shutting as the invisible thing ripping Merrin’s head off finishes its terrible work and tears the fresh kill off of Caduceus, yanking it into the long grass nearby where he can hear jaws gnawing furiously, grinding bone on bone and wet. Then the sounds stop. The grass is red now all around. Blood splattered against a nearby headstone.

Caduceus rolls carefully onto his flank, scanning the dark yard around him.

“Hello?” he whispers.

Silence.

“You’re within your rights to kill me too, but it won’t benefit you long term.”

He feels something brush his shoulder. Then warm breath against his neck.

He looks over his shoulder and as he does, watches the air beside him shimmer, then darken, then solidify into a hulking feline shape. Two gleaming fey-light eyes refract light from strange retinas as a six-legged, full grown displacer beast materializes from its dispelled illusion field. It’s sitting almost directly beside him. The thing brushing his arm now is one of the two long, prehensile limbs growing from its shoulder blades – sinuous tendrils tipped in petal-like hoods that bristle along their interior with humming spines. The mechanism for their invisibility.

Bright, intelligent eyes scan curiously over Caduceus. Its tail lashes like a stimulated house cat’s.

Caduceus doesn’t flinch away, just meets its bright stare with one of his own.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

The beast shifts forward, lazily, prowling on heavy paws until its long body is half-circled around Caduceus. He suspects the beast is female. Her displacer limbs keep brushing his shoulders and hair. She sniffs curiously at his tunic, licking a rough tongue across his shoulder, then his neck, and cheek and she does he can hear the low, intrigued growl rumbling in her throat. Caduceus doesn’t move, doesn’t react at all. He just waits. Heart pounding. Paralyzed with dread and a desperate clutch of hope.

Then in strange, breathy Common, originating from somewhere around its skull, the beast says, “Where is your herd?”

“Gone,” Caduceus says. “It’s just me for now.”

“Do better, young guardian. I won’t help you again.”

Then the beast vanishes. Caduceus immediately rolls over, gets his knees under him and ignores the instant agony from his broken leg. He moves to the body, shouldering it to roll the mangled corpse and get at the dead man’s short sword. He glances fervently toward the southwest section of the graveyard, on the opposite side of the temple. So far, Drek doesn’t seem to have heard the sounds of his compatriot dying. Not, mind you, that the displacer beast gave him time to be noisy—

He hears screams.

Caduceus looks up. The screams continue on and off for about thirty seconds… then silence. The silence goes on and on. Caduceus saws the bonds at his wrists well enough to tear them with brute strength and again he waits, listening. The silence continues, continues… and then Caduceus watches at the far end of the grounds as a bloody, shredded carcass appears to drag itself across the lawn toward the open gate, pulled by invisible, massive jaws. Caduceus makes no move to stop this or get up.

He just presses his palms against his broken leg and gingerly heals the break, soothing away swelling and bruising until there is no sign of it ever being there. The Goliath corpse disappears through the gates and Caduceus immediately lunges to his feet, rushing across the ground to grab the open gates and slam them shut. He grabs the fallen chain from the ash near the entryway and loops the gates shut again, immediately feeling the magic in the barrier wall flare awake once more. He can see, just at the mouth of the gate, black, sickly brambles already stretching rotten fronds toward the once-open door.

Caduceus collapses then sinks with his back against the gates.

“Oooooh,” he breathes, the word dragging low from his chest.

A brief, hysterical noise tries to rise inside him.

He presses two hands against his sternum and a swell of magic slides through him and all those emotions still, calming until they are distant murmurs at the far edge of his awareness and for a while, magically numb to the post-traumatic terror, Caduceus Clay contemplates how very, very differently this day could have ended. He wonders, in a calm, neutral kind of way, if this was the very thing his sister feared when she left him his armor. He wonders how bad, how dangerous and difficult her task if she still saw fit to leave him even knowing what could happen.

He wonders if he will see his family again.

He wonders how long they’ve been gone, how much longer they will be, how much longer he can hold the gate alone.

Then later, when the effect of Calm Emotions has faded, he packs a bag and begins to wait.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warnings: Assailant basically pinning someone down and starting to undress them against their will with clear intent to do harm. There's some gooey gore stuff too during combat sequences. 
> 
> Random Notes: Caduceus is a cool interesting character and I'm probably way to investing in situations where he loses his chill. Comments feedback and questions are ingested for future fic and much appreciated.


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